


Groceries

by theGreenestPaint



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: But this is all about Esme, Domestic, Gen, The adventures of being an immortal stay-at-home vampire mom, The other Cullens are mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:09:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25621909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theGreenestPaint/pseuds/theGreenestPaint
Summary: Esme Cullen has not eaten a bite of food in years. She cannot eat a single thing that the Forks Thriftway is selling. Nevertheless, Esme takes herself grocery shopping with practiced regularity.
Relationships: Carlisle Cullen/Esme Cullen
Comments: 13
Kudos: 31





	Groceries

**Author's Note:**

> idk what this is but please enjoy esme’s grocery shopping routine

Esme Cullen has not eaten a bite of food in years. She cannot eat a single thing that the Forks Thriftway is selling.

(This is not entirely true. She could bare her sharp teeth and ask the butcher in the deli section for the blood that seeps from the meat as he works, but that would lead to questions.)

The grocery store is bare of what she needs to feed her family. Nevertheless, Esme takes herself grocery shopping with practiced regularity. It simply wouldn’t do never to be seen at the store. By all appearances she has five teenage children and a husband notorious in the hospital for never stopping to eat. For Carlisle Cullen’s wife to never be seen buying food would be a step too far, a note too suspicious.

Besides, she enjoys it. The whole thing is a masquerade that feels rife with mischief.

(She never buys meat. Enough animals die for her family as it is.)

She never buys meat and is always waiting for the question that surfaces from time to time so that she can answer: yes! My family and I are vegetarians. Yes, all of us. Oh gosh we really love it, it has just improved our lives in so many ways, it’s so much healthier. My daughter Rosalie has never eaten meat in her life believe it or not!

It’s hilarious.

No one else is in on the joke, but Esme isn’t letting that stop her. She knows that it’s funny. 

(It’s also the closest she can get to letting people in on the secret. The Secret.)

She buys a lot of canned goods and non perishables. Her reasons for this are two-fold. Firstly, if her shopping trips seem a little too infrequent, a bit too far apart, then at worst people will think she’s a lazy cook who leans on staples with a long shelf life. Nothing suspicious. A penchant for baked beans hardly makes her a monster. 

(Something else might, but that’s nobody’s business.)

Secondly, she can drop them off at food banks. Some goods go to the Forks Community Food Bank, because it’s close and easy and it’s nice.

(It’s good to feel like a part of the community, like a giver more than a leech.)

Some of it goes to church food pantries as she tries not to think too hard about the condition of her soul. Carlisle will come with her on these trips sometimes. He says that he finds them peaceful. Esme knows that the smaller churches remind him of his father.

The rest of the food is delivered to neighboring towns. Spread the wealth, spread the love. Avoid raising suspicions that the Cullen kitchen is a front and her shopping habits a sham.

Fresh produce, too, goes in to the shopping cart. Lots of leafy greens, fruits and vegetables. Surely a doctor’s wife should be somewhat health conscious. The adoptive mother of five growing children will want to make sure her clan gets all their vitamins and minerals.

(She does want that, of course, but this isn’t the food they need. And her children will never grow.)

She always buys garlic. She doesn’t need it, it’s just a private joke between her and herself.

(She threatens the children with it, sometimes, when they’re being a pain. None of them thinks it’s as funny as she does, but that hasn’t stopped her. Besides, when Emmet is in the right mood he’ll fake a dramatic death-by-garlic.)

(“ _Carlisle, I picked up something special when I went in to town. I think it will really...spice things up for us._ ” She has his attention. “ _What is it my love?_ ” She whips out the clove of garlic and raises an eyebrow.)

If all of the produce that she chooses is toeing the line of overripe, no one has questioned it yet. It’s a simple thing for her to smell what food is fresh and what food...isn’t. She brings it home and composts the lot. 

Esme uses the compost in her sprawling garden; she only grows flowers as a rule. Although she made a brief foray into growing snap peas when they first moved here and offloaded the lot on to her neighbors. Well. Fellow townspeople. They avoid real neighbors as a rule, as well. It was a good excuse as any to introduce herself.

The compost heap is kept well away from the house, far enough to keep Edward from complaining about the terrible smell of decomposition.

( Our Sense Of Smell Is Very Sensitive and The Compost Smells Atrocious, Esme, How can you Stand It )

(What is she supposed to do, waste it?)

(The complaints about the smell only ever lead to Carlisle recounting how he was turned while he hid in a cellar full of rotting potatoes. (The potatoes grow more rotten and the cellar more cramped with each increasingly dramatic re-telling. (It’s possible that Esme encourages this.))). 

So the compost is kept away from the house, and Esme keeps the peace. When the compost heap overwhelms her needs, she offloads it to community gardens. 

On foot, in the middle of the night, pushing her full wheelbarrow. She makes a clandestine mission of it all, dressed in black from head to toe. Sometimes bringing Carlisle or Alice as her partner in crime. She’s been known to wear grease paint on occasion; after 100 years of existence, you learn to take your small pleasures where you find them.

She likes to wander the gardens, too, admire the sunflowers and vegetables since she’s made the trip. Esme grew up on a farm, after all. It’s nice to see this. Small scale, low-stakes farming. It delivers the satisfaction of growing something from the ground up, without the back-breaking labor and financial worries of farming for a livelihood. It’s just...nice.

Esme likes to weed and water a neglected plot or two while she’s at it. She likes to imagine the wayward gardeners’ bemusement to find their land well tended in their absence. Lord knows she has the time, and she makes quick work of the nighttime gardening.

(She thinks this not quite what people picture when they speak about creatures of the night.)

So yes, Esme Cullen goes grocery shopping quite regularly. But she certainly doesn’t cook. Not for years, decades even. Not since she was alive.

***************************************

“Her name is Isabella.”

_Is that Italian? It sounds Italian._

***************************************

“I’ve invited her over for dinner.”

It appears that this time, Esme Cullen does cook.

She’s going to cook the most welcoming, Italian meal that Forks, Washington has ever seen.

(She’s also going to keep Jasper from eating the poor girl.)

***************************************

It throws a wrench in her shopping schedule, but it’s well worth it. Esme has quickly curated an expansive Pinterest board of Italian meals. 

Esme in fact has accrued several Pinterest boards in preparation for future homes and gardens over the past several months, but that’s neither here nor there. 

She is armed and ready. She is shopping to cook, shopping for a recipe. This is a mission, if less secretive than her midnight compost deliveries. 

She has to visit the Thriftway twice because on the first trip, acting out of nerves and habit, she bought lettuce that was just about to go mushy and bad. Esme gleefully explains her mistake to the cashier. To err is human after all. She doesn’t explain the why of her mistake, she can’t, but it’s nice to open up for once. 

Esme is delighted.  _This time she gets to use the garlic_.


End file.
